


What Goes Around, Comes Around

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Ex-chainmates, Gen, Javert is a honey badger, Madeleine Era, Valjean is concerned, and honey badger don't care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valjean's past comes back to haunt him - doesn't it always?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Goes Around, Comes Around

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify, this is set after Valjean is rich and respected but before he's made mayor. And I did write this with a specific canon in mind, but I don't know if it really came across, and I do know that people have their own favorite canons, so imagine it as you will, people. 
> 
> Constructive criticism very much welcome.

When the new inspector arrives at the factory one morning, Madeleine’s first thought is: _I know this man_. He forces it aside, standing very still as he gazes upwards to this man who stands so straight and tall in his dark greatcoat, impassively returning Madeleine's gaze. He looks like someone Madeleine remembers. Like someone who knows who he is. 

Someone who knows... That face... 

He shakes his head violently to clear it of foolish thoughts and makes his way to the stairs leading to his office. He hears the low hum behind him of curious voices gossiping, the clatter of the craftsmen at work, but all that seems surreal when compared to this man who reminds him of his past. 

“Monsieur,” the man says as Madeleine enters the room, and bows briefly in a manner that can only reinforce how very tall he is when he straightens. His gaze is penetrating. “I am Inspector Javert, formerly of the Paris police. I trust you were informed that I was arriving?” 

Madeleine stares at him for a split second, resisting the urge to ask the first question that comes into his head: _Do I know you?_ “You are very welcome here, Inspector,” he says instead. “This town will profit greatly from your presence.” 

“Thank you.” After a pause, Javert says, “Somehow I feel as if we have met before, Monsieur.” 

_As do I_ , thinks Madeleine.

“I find it doubtful, but..." he begins, then falters, fearing himself transparent in asking but too uneasy to do otherwise. “Are you Parisian yourself, or did you perhaps live elsewhere in your youth?” 

"Paris was an opportunity, Monsieur. Nothing more. Surely you can understand, as Monsieur le Maire tells me you came up from the southward countryside before settling here to make your fortune." 

Suspicion is not the thing flickering in the inspector's gaze, though it isn't far off. The eyes themselves are a shade of pale, piercing gray that squeezes suffocating fingers around the pounding of Madeleine's heart. It is an uncommon color, one he has seen only once before, and then in the eyes of a galley slave. 

Madeleine lifts and lowers one shoulder slowly. "At times there is little hope of fortune if one cannot travel to greener pastures. A poor man flees his poverty." 

"And a rich man his conscience," parries Javert with an aborted arch of his lip that could have become smile or snarl. "We all have our burdens to bear, Monsieur, but you do seem to be bearing yours more ably than most." 

Cold sweat prickles down Madeleine's spine. Indecision seals his mouth as he searches the inspector's gaze for some sign as to whether the words are meant as insult or implication. Or compliment?

Inscrutable, Javert continues into the quiet, "Monsieur le Maire speaks well of you; he suggested I make your acquaintance and I see it was good that he did so. I should hope to make your life and business more secure, if it is in my power, and to see you continue on as fine as your workers say you have begun in Montreuil sur Mer. Good day, Monsieur." 

His bow is as perfunctory as the first. Madeleine is left frozen behind his desk with damp palms and a dream-like sensation of having been flung out into empty space. The sound of Javert's steady footsteps fades away down the stairs and across the factory floor below. 

**

He avoids crossing paths with Javert as much as he can manage and, apparently preoccupied with rooting out Montreuil sur Mer's darker vices, the Inspector allows him his space, though his gaze often seeks Madeleine across streets and through crowds. From afar, Madeleine watches and tries to convince himself of the ridiculousness of his suspicions. 

There was once a boy in Toulon, lean and cunning as a feral cat. He shared Jean Valjean's chain and his labor, said nothing of his helpless tears during those first, unbearable months in the bagne, only nudged him roughly in the right direction until he began to understand the daily routines. Not a soft boy, not even a gentle one, but the lack of malice in his hands had seemed as comforting as a caress in that place where every other touch seemed to bring pain. 

The Inspector was not that boy. He cannot have been. 

_But his eyes... and that arch of the lip that is not a smile. In Toulon he would have shown his teeth and perhaps a guard would have struck him for insubordination._

An ex-convict cannot become a police inspector. 

_Why not, if an ex-convict can become a wealthy and well-respected citizen?_

It is nothing like the same thing, the process would be far too complicated and risky. For Valjean to tear up his parole papers and become Madeleine was simple by comparison, yet only by the grace of God had he managed to escape scrutiny upon entering Montreuil sur Mer. A police inspector would be forever under the eyes of his fellow officers, in constant danger of running across an old acquaintance from his prison days, or of being called to testify against one. Forged papers can only solve so many problems for a man. 

Javert cannot have been that boy. 

**

In a small town, two people can avoid each other for only so long. It is this that Madeleine tells himself when he almost literally runs into Javert coming around a corner one evening. Javert murmurs an apology, stepping aside to make room. 

“I did not expect to see you out so late, Monsieur,” he says. “Are you returning home?” 

It takes Madeleine’s brain a moment to properly process the question. “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he replies, and nods quickly as he makes to brush past Javert, hoping to be out of sight before the man begins to taunt him again. 

“Good,” Javert says as he passes. “The nighttime is for thieves and policemen...not upstanding citizens such as yourself.” 

Madeleine pauses mid-step. "Do you have some complaint to make of me, Inspector?" he asks tightly.

"Several," Javert replies, blunt as can be. "But none that are fit for airing in such a public venue." 

"Then perhaps we should go elsewhere and speak plainly, once and for all." The words should terrify him. Their finality is what he has fashioned so many lies to escape, but resentment is stirring, a flush of heat he can feel in his cheeks. He avoided Javert these past weeks because he was afraid, of the truth, of his own deceit, but that fear is nowhere to be found. Stubborn temper fills its place. 

Javert only smiles his disquieting smile in the dark. "Choose your ground."

"I? You yield the advantage." 

"Do I?" 

As if there could be any advantage in this madness. Still, if there is, it belongs to the man who stands so brusquely amused on the brink of it, and the location of the plunge will change nothing.

"...Very well. The factory has closed for the day and the workers gone home. Come, we can talk in my office there without fear of interruption. Or eavesdroppers." 

**

Apparently at his ease, Javert stands before the desk in the small office as if preparing to give a report. He had refused Madeleine's invitation to be seated, claiming he was more comfortable on his feet. The only suggestion of unease is the restless stroke of his fingers through the dish of wood shavings Madeleine keeps for blotting ink. 

"Toulon is never as far behind us as we like to think," he remarks conversationally, making Madeleine flinch in surprise. "We both have a great deal at stake, too much to prevaricate any longer. I think you will agree that trust is key to our lives continuing as they are in this place, but we have no reason to trust each other yet." 

"Have I seemed so untrustworthy since you came to Montreuil sur Mer?" 

"On the contrary. A more trustworthy face I have known only once, before Toulon, and it belonged to the most treacherous snake I ever had the misfortune to believe in. You see my dilemma." 

"Then I hope you realize mine. When we were in - " He tries but his mouth can not produce the name that rolled so easily from Javert's tongue. The thought of speaking it brings a shudder, and he amends, "When last we knew each other, you did things beyond my comprehension, with no explanation, and I trusted you then to do me no harm. But that was years ago. Where have you been since then? What have you done? And what of Montreuil sur Mer? These people are innocents, if you mean them ill by this - " 

"Innocents!" With a contemptuous hand Javert flicks away the notion. "You have been too well schooled for such fairytales, 24601." 

Madeleine recoils. Torn between anger and dread at the address, he winds his hands tightly together beneath the edge of the desk, white-knuckled and trembling. "Do not call me that, Inspector! I am not that man anymore. How would it please you if I called you by your number?" 

"It might indicate a level of honesty we are sorely lacking. You know I am not an inspector, of police or anything else." 

"Honesty, you say! But it does not come so easy in this." 

An unsettled laugh jolts out of him as he considers the absurdity. "Inspector. Inspector Javert. Good God, what were you thinking? We thought you fearless in the galleys but nothing you did there compares to this bit of brazenness!" 

"It was not so hard as all that. Javert was indeed the name of an inspector sent from Paris to help police Montreuil sur Mer. He forfeited it and his papers to me, so now they are mine, fairly won." 

"You cannot expect me to believe he just surrendered his identity to you and disappeared, without any trouble?" Madeleine sobers abruptly. "You didn't..." 

He doesn't recall having seen his old chain-mate offended before.

"Killing a man to get what you want from him indicates a dearth of imagination," Javert pronounces with exaggerated care, as if speaking to a dullard. The silver of his eyes is chill, insulted. "Did I not tell you the man was an inspector, and should you not know what sort of poor, patched sloven that suggests? I made him a handsome offer and he accepted. That is all." 

The silence that follows remains, both of them unwilling to break it for differing reasons. The anger that had spurred him into breaking cover now slipping away, Madeleine contemplates his companion and the rush of the old, wary fondness locked up in his chest with nowhere to go. Javert has paced to the window, ducking his head to stare out at the darkness, shoulders stiff, perhaps realizing only now how very uncertain of him Madeleine has been these past months. 

"I am sorry," Madeleine tells him finally. "But I truly know nothing of you but the boy you were in - back then. We were neither of us very fine human beings at the time, and I know too well the sort of monster I could have become." 

"Yet here you are, tender as a lamb. Tell me, what happened?" 

"Not long after I was released on parole, I stole the Bishop of Digne's silver." 

Javert barks a startled laugh, turning back from the blackness outside, and Madeleine smiles a little in reply. 

"I was caught, of course. But the Bishop lied to the gendarmes to have me set free and made me a gift of the silver I had stolen. He said my soul was bought for God with that silver." 

"So the holy man gave you a miracle." 

"Yes," he agrees, disregarding the sardonic tone. "I was given God's mercy by the hands of the Bishop of Digne, but later that same day I stole yet again, from a child. That was what finally struck through to me; I saw what I had become and it sickened me. I broke parole and left my name behind me. Since then I have tried to be worthy of the grace shown to me, but unlike you I had no papers when I arrived here, 'borrowed' or otherwise. There have been a great many lies to cover for that lack." 

"That is what brought you here?" 

"The parts no one else can tell you, yes. I assume you have already gleaned everything else from one person or another, of my arrival and establishment." 

"With ease. Small towns are very loose-tongued." 

Curious, Madeleine rises from his seat and leans forward, his hands braced on the desk. Javert has retreated into silhouette, a sliver of new moon casting its light through the window at his back, the tumble of dark hair over his forehead throwing shadow over his face. He stirs. 

"It is a strange tale you tell. I hope you will not be too disappointed if there is no divine intervention in mine." 

"You are free and whole, is that not enough?" 

"Perhaps." Javert blows a sigh and begins, "For a year after my release, I abided by the law. I worked an honest job for the pittance offered, obeyed the man in charge of my parole though he was as corrupt as the guards in Toulon, tolerated the contempt of my neighbors, and starved as nobly as I knew how, but by the end of that first year the conditions I found myself in had well and truly palled. So I exposed some of my parole officer's choicer misdeeds to the public eye and slipped away during the eruption that followed. There was a forger in Paris who had worked with me and my family in the past; he helped me to disappear. New papers, a clean record." 

"How did you ever pay him?" 

"With my savings. Inadequately, to say it plain, but it left me utterly ruined until I could find employment to finish paying him. For a few months after that I made my living within the law. What little spare time I could find was for learning, from borrowed books or on the streets, and I thought it best to focus on memorizing the laws of the land. Thus it was very annoying to find myself jailed again. No need to look so, the crime was not mine. My forger had decided that I should pay off my debt by helping him execute a certain illegal venture; when I refused he framed me for it. The prison sentence was not long, so I decided to serve it out before committing the crime I had been imprisoned for." 

"You _what?"_

Javert pauses to give him a scathing look. "I _evened the scales of Justice,"_ he paraphrases, "if you prefer to think of it that way. It was not particularly profitable, but the man responsible for the whole affair agreed to help fund my departure from Paris in return for remaining free of the police. That was when I met the inspector whose place I have taken. To have such purpose in my life and duties has been a great satisfaction, however dangerous the part I play." 

He falls quiet again.

Busy absorbing a nostalgic sense of shock, Madeleine can only shake his head wordlessly. He recalls having been unnerved by the sheer, energetic cunning of his chain-mate when he bestirred himself to acquire tools or plot escapes for the others, but that was in Toulon, almost another world where men were driven to extraordinary lengths on a daily basis. It had not occurred to him until now that the same spirit might be far more intimidating when expressed in ordinary surroundings. 

They observe each other across the barrier of the desk. 

"I learned enough of the law to perform my duties well," says Javert steadily. "And though I have not believed in innocents since I was very small, I swear to you that I have no interest in harming this town. If honesty is difficult in this matter then trust will be slower still to build - but understand that if I have my way, my past will remain behind me this time." 

The man has been Montreuil sur Mer's inspector for months without attracting undue notice except by the merciless speed with which he reduced the petty crime by the docks. He has settled without complaint into what is at once a thankless, dangerous, and ill-paid job, and though he understands mercy as little as he did in Toulon, he has held himself to a standard of conduct quite as high as the one by which he measures others. 

Yes, trusting each other will still take a long time. But mercy is not so hard to learn, and the boy was always swifter than Valjean to grasp a concept. 

Stepping cautiously out from behind the desk to join the other man by the window, Madeleine reaches across the distance between them. "Whatever your past held, you must know that I have no desire to turn you in. Or to drive you away. If you are truly willing to continue honorably as Montreuil sur Mer's inspector, I would be very glad for you to stay on." 

Briefly, Javert considers him and the proffered hand. Then closes the distance to grasp it. "Monsieur Madeleine," he says, and makes his swift, not quite mocking bow over their joined hands. 

Madeleine dips his own head gently in return. "Monsieur l’Inspecteur."


End file.
